Mary Toft and the Rabbit Babies
"Oh Mary, you got to get out of the habit,
Of playing nude games with that old brown buck rabbit."
Thus spoke Mary's husband in tones firm but soft.
(His forename's not known, but his surname was Toft.)
But Mary ignored him, and down in the burrow,
There's many a buck who's been ploughing her furrow.
Or thus spake the gossips, in Godalming, Surrey,
While leaning on fences, their tongues in a flurry.
Her belly grew thick, and she sent for the doctor
And what happened next meant the neighbours all mocked her,
And whispered and giggled and thought it so funny,
For young Mary Toft soon gave birth to a bunny.
Alas it was dead, but white tail and long ears,
Convinces Doc Howard it's what it appears;
He'll now make his name with this strangest of cases,
Imagines the wonder on learn-ed men's faces.
And when in the following days, three or four,
He helps her deliver yet seven buns more,
He goes to his study and takes pen in hand,
And writes to professors throughout this fair land.
On getting the message from Godalming Town,
Two prominent surgeons at once hurried down:
Sir Nicholas St Andre, the king's own physician,
And Sir Richard Manningham, the famed obstretician.
And very obligingly, our lovely Mary
Produces nine more babes, white-tailed, long-eared, hairy,
And both of these eminent men stand, astounded;
Have all of the medical laws been confounded?
So when from this spectacle they've both recovered
Sir Nick writes a paper on what he's discovered,
Sir richard, though, one of the bunnies inspects,
Returns to his lab, and the thing he dissects.
Immersing a lung in solution, it floated.
"This creature, born dead, must have breathed once," he noted.
"I think that I'm smelling, not rabbit, but rat.
I'm going to Surrey." and grabs coat and hat.
Confronting our Mary, he says: "This is rummy.
You tell me the truth, or I'll open your tummy,
And just like that goosie that lay golden eggs,
I'll find out what's there at the top of your legs."
To save herself this Mary needed no urgin',
She'd not be attacked not by any mad surgeon,
And thus she confessed, nature had been perverted,
That into her womb these poor beasts she'd inserted.
The merriment sparked by our Mary's strange doin's,
Left poor old Sir Nick's reputation in ruins,
And Howard, first witness, escaped not the flak,
And found that his clients gave him, too, the sack.
So that's the whole story, the facts all as stated,
That rabbits and humans aren't closely related,
But you ask Hugh Heffner, of Playboy Club fame,
And he may well tell you, and I'll do the same...
Affection for rabbits in man is enduring,
And many a man in his time's found alluring
A girl in long ears and a powder puff tail,
So p'raps there's a grainlet of truth in the tale.
More historical misrepresentation
Sunday, June 30, 2002